Have you ever procrastinated by...

[Snaploud]

...learning everything about a subject except the specific information needed for an exam. I'm finding myself in that position today. I have a graduate tax class exam tomorrow (technically, today--as it's really late at night), and I'm sitting here learning about some tax rules that aren't covered in the exam.

Something tells me this isn't a smart way to study for an exam...

Oh, well. I have a decent grasp of the material, and this exam (surprisingly enough) is only worth about 12.5% of my final grade. I've done well with everything else.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I feel for you but damn this is an esoteric question....I wonder how many will be able to answer positively.

The closest I can come is before I joined the army even though I knew we'd be doing a lot of running I would only ride my bike most days to get ready.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I do this all the time. I was a history major, so I'll take some minor fact I'm unsure about and start a chain wiki until I end up reading about some obscure ruler of the Saffavid Persians fighting against the Ottoman Empire.

Today, I'm supposed to be studying the law (Property), but I might read about the Iroquois instead. I can justify it because the book mentions English and French legal justifications related American land ownership, which is related to one case I read at the beginning of the year (although that case will probably not be on the exam).

 

[Nardpuncher]

OK, I was wrong.

 

[Vulcan Princess]

I do this all the time. I was a history major, so I'll take some minor fact I'm unsure about and start a chain wiki until I end up reading about some obscure ruler of the Saffavid Persians fighting against the Ottoman Empire.

Today, I'm supposed to be studying the law (Property), but I might read about the Iroquois instead. I can justify it because the book mentions English and French legal justifications related American land ownership, which is related to one case I read at the beginning of the year (although that case will probably not be on the exam).

I do this, too. It takes me forever to look something up because I get distracted by so many interesting things along the way!

P.S. Good luck on your property exam! If you pass, I'll give you Blackacre for life, provided that you don't use it to build a widget factory.

 

[cultcross]

Yeah I used to do this, I found out fascinating things about the natural sciences when doing my degree, not one of which was on my finals.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I do this all the time. I was a history major, so I'll take some minor fact I'm unsure about and start a chain wiki until I end up reading about some obscure ruler of the Saffavid Persians fighting against the Ottoman Empire.

Today, I'm supposed to be studying the law (Property), but I might read about the Iroquois instead. I can justify it because the book mentions English and French legal justifications related American land ownership, which is related to one case I read at the beginning of the year (although that case will probably not be on the exam).

I do this, too. It takes me forever to look something up because I get distracted by so many interesting things along the way!

P.S. Good luck on your property exam! If you pass, I'll give you Blackacre for life, provided that you don't use it to build a widget factory.

Fuck Blackacre!

 

[RJDiogenes]

It's been many a year since I've had to study for anything, but I've always had a tendency to get distracted down random roads by interesting facts.

 

[Holdfast]

...learning everything about a subject except the specific information needed for an exam.

Sure, used to do this all the time.

Learnt a lot of interesting stuff doing this. In the end, it's all good.

 

[Snaploud]

The exam is over. I think it went well. I'm glad to have had time to do a second pass through the answers as I apparently made a number of stupid mistakes the first time over. Obviously, I should have used more caffeine to wake myself up.

 

[ThankQ]

I do this all the time. I was a history major, so I'll take some minor fact I'm unsure about and start a chain wiki until I end up reading about some obscure ruler of the Saffavid Persians fighting against the Ottoman Empire.

Yeah, I kill hours and hours this way. It should be called "Burking" after "Connections" and TDTUC.

What you doing on the computer, Steve?

Oh, I'm just burking around on wiki.

 

[Jadzia]

If you use the internet as a study aid, I imagine this is common.

The web is a heavily branched thing, and wherever we go with it our screens are strewn with links tempting us to look at something else. The fact that these links are all likely to be related to the page currently under study means that they'll easily catch our interest.

If we don't manage ourselves when we use it, the internet can make us inefficient.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I do this all the time. I was a history major, so I'll take some minor fact I'm unsure about and start a chain wiki until I end up reading about some obscure ruler of the Saffavid Persians fighting against the Ottoman Empire.

Yeah, I kill hours and hours this way. It should be called "Burking" after "Connections" and TDTUC.

What you doing on the computer, Steve?

Oh, I'm just burking around on wiki.

I don't think that'll ever catch on. Although I did start watching The Day the Universe Changed. Great, great show.

 

[T'Baio]

I just tend to procrasturbate.

 

[ThankQ]

^No, it won't. It sounds crap. Would be accurate, though.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I hated school and am so glad I dont have to go back.

 

[Holdfast]

If you use the internet as a study aid, I imagine this is common.

That does probably make it easier, but I did it with any book I had to revise from. We used to have to do Latin translations from various historical works, and I never could bring myself to concentrate on the one I was meant to, but flicked backwards and forward to other passages because they seemed more interesting.

Same applied to my Religious Education homework, lots of which was around the New Testament. I never found the Gospels particularly engaging, and would read the OT and Revelations instead. Fire, brimstone and a vengeful God is so much more fun.

Those are the two that really stand out for me, but I did the same with almost every subject too. I like learning new things, but I hate having to learn things (even as a kid, I found it vaguely insulting that teachers believed they could educate me better than I could myself), so would end up reading other things instead.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I was the same. I would literally nod off in class from boredom, but on my own I was learning constantly-- and stuff that was far beyond even most of my teachers.

 

[M'Sharak]

If you use the internet as a study aid, I imagine this is common.

That does probably make it easier, but I did it with any book I had to revise from. We used to have to do Latin translations from various historical works, and I never could bring myself to concentrate on the one I was meant to, but flicked backwards and forward to other passages because they seemed more interesting.

I also used to catch myself doing this with books quite often. I'd get to the end of an encyclopedia entry and find "See also:" - so I would. Or in the etymology section of a dictionary entry, there's a string of word roots followed by "More at," indicating that there was additional information to be found in another entry - I could chase "more at"s for hours and frequently did. The same sort of thing works with any reference book, really, and adding more books can just mean more fun. Of course trying to reconstruct, two hours later, how you happened to arrive at a particular obscure bit of knowledge...